


that I ever did see

by seventhswan



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Fluff, M/M, Misunderstandings, Obliviousness, get-together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4428770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>"You’re starting to bruise,” Hawke says, brushing the backs of his knuckles up over Fenris' cheekbone, frowning as though the bruise is some foe he can fight and loot.</p>
</blockquote><p>Hawke buys a ring, Fenris is confused, Isabela can't believe what she's expected to put up with, Merrill just wants to put flowers in everyone's hair, and Varric hasn't had material this golden in years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that I ever did see

**Author's Note:**

> Set during act 2, but imagines that no progress has yet been made in the Hawke/Fenris romance. Despite the fact that this is a tight Fenris POV, for fluidity of reading I have referred to everyone by their given names in the narrative (ie Merrill is just Merrill, and Anders just Anders).
> 
> Warning for: single mention of a canonical character death. Spoilers for two act 2 quests.

Lowtown is the fishy-smelling, crowded, noisy holding-pen for the hopeless that it always is, but Fenris can admit it’s always a mite less offensive coming off the back of a week spent sleeping rough on the Wounded Coast. That’s probably why, when Hawke slows up at the sight of Trinkets Emporium as usual, Fenris is fairly content to lean up against a wall and wait. He stretches out his calves where they’re thinking, traitorously, of cramping up.

Hawke is a terrible, incorrigible window-shopper, and spends like his coin burns his hands; the Trinketsmonger knows it. He’s already pulling display boxes from somewhere, smiling unctuously and saying, _good afternoon, ser Hawke, what can I do for you -_

They could be here a while. However, nobody is dead, or even terribly bloodied, and the sun is shining. Some days it’s enough to be alive and some days it isn’t; today it is. He’ll wait. 

Across from him, Isabela pulls Merrill in under a tattered awning, encouraging her to tuck her chin out of the sun. He can’t quite hear what they’re saying, just Merrill's fluting laughter, the specific ebb and flow that Isabela’s voice takes on when she’s telling jokes. Isabela sticks her tongue out cheerfully when she catches his eye. Fenris’s tongue touches the backs of his front teeth like it wants, just for a second, to do it back.

When Hawke reappears he touches Fenris once on the shoulder, and holds out a ring, smiling ruefully like he expects it to not be accepted. It's odd, Hawke doesn't normally hesitate about these things; Fenris seems to be constantly accepting equipment and presents from him, and he’s now well over the strangeness of it. The man’s allergic to coin, is all. 

“What does it do?” Fenris asks, trying it on the middle finger of his right hand.

“Oh, I – defense,“ Hawke mumbles vaguely, like he’s been asked a difficult question. The ring won’t pass the knuckle, so Fenris wiggles it back off. 

“I’m not sure which – which finger it’ll fit,” Hawke says. He’s standing watching Fenris with his hands aloft, as though he’s about to reach out, take the ring back and try it on Fenris’ fingers himself. Fenris feels suddenly self-conscious. He didn’t realize there was a wrong way to put a ring on.

Isabela looks suspiciously like she’s trying not to laugh.

“Try the fourth finger,” she suggests, and Merrill squints at her, making that frustrated little face she does when she feels like she’s being left out of a joke. For once, Fenris feels hopelessly behind, as well.

“Isa _bel_ a,” Hawke says, his voice breaking a little in the middle, in a definite whine. The ring slips perfectly onto his fourth finger, and Isabela shoots Hawke a significant look.

“You deserve it,” she tells him, and then she pouts, the sultry precipice of her full lower lip attracting admiring glances from several nearby undesirables. “How come you never buy _me_ anything that nice?”

Hawke’s ears burn red. “I buy you lots of nice things!” he sputters.

Nice? Is it nice? Fenris looks at it again, where it catches the sun, flashing merrily. It’s a narrow gold band, carved inside and out, and haphazardly set with several very tiny clear stones, but he has no idea if that makes it nice or not. It’s just equipment, like all the rings they wear. Hawke bought Merrill a gold ring too, several months ago, in a thick, roughly hammered rose gold that covers almost the entirety of her right thumb. Rose gold is the right kind of metal to support her… particular “talents”, apparently.

“First the amethyst necklace, now this,” Isabela sighs, pulling Merrill close. “I’m starting to feel neglected.”

Fenris twitches the chain around his neck and scowls. 

“It’s not a necklace, it’s an important amulet,” he points out. He repeats this to himself frequently, because it really is the most ostentatious, hideous jewelled thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and he isn’t otherwise certain he’d be able to bring himself to put it on in the mornings. He wears it tucked into his armor and it is, at least, comfortingly heavy around his neck.

“Ex _act_ ly,” Hawke agrees.

“You don’t suit amethysts anyway,” Fenris points out. Isabela gasps.

“Heresy!” she says, pointing with an accusing finger. “I suit everything.”

“You said it yourself,” Fenris says doggedly. “I was there. You complained for an hour about finding that ridiculous amethyst tiara in the di Montayo basement; you said purple clashes with your eyes.” 

“Oh, yes, Isabela,” Merrill says, perking up. “You remember, we sold it and went to get drinks, and you made us call you Pirate Queen Isabela all night.”

Isabela smiles faintly, remembering.

“Ah, yes,” she says. “Varric folded me that paper tiara. Good times. You were particularly good at appropriately queenly treatment, Kitten. That’s why you are, of course, my _favorite_.”

Merrill beams.

“Why wouldn’t you use sapphires?” Isabela laments, linking arms with Merrill. “What a waste.”

Merrill acknowledges the loveliness of sapphires but starts making the case for emeralds, and they start walking, and thankfully, it seems like that’s going to be the end of it, even if it feels like the ring burns Fenris’ hand the whole way home.

|

It’s not the end of it. Fenris’ plans for the rest of the day, or possibly the week, involved hiding _alone_ in the mansion and sleeping, but it all gets hopelessly derailed until he’s been spirited by Hawke’s big pleading eyes to the Hanged Man, where he’s now surrounded and losing terribly at cards. Isabela is the drunkest of them by far, and she is winning mercilessly; Aveline seems to be about ten seconds away from thumping the table in frustrated rage. Hawke, sitting at Fenris' left elbow, is well on the way to sloppy-drunk and folded out of the game some time ago. Fenris is beginning to wish he'd done the same.

“Someone go get Varric,” Isabela huffs, pulling another handful of winnings towards herself. “He’s missing my victory; he should be writing this down.”

Varric is still chatting to a barmaid in a far corner of the bar, where he’s been for the last hour. He didn’t even come over when they arrived, just waved and mouthed _save me a seat_. This particular barmaid is, unlike her bolshy colleagues, terribly timid and mousy. Every time Fenris tries to order a drink off her he finds she’s gone back to the kitchens, or has her head in under the bar, fiddling with the barrels. It’s starting to feel personal. She seems to be very happy being the full focus of Varric’s attention, though. There’s a high color in her freckled cheeks, her laugh just a little too loud.

“Oh, leave him alone, Isabela,” Hawke says. He’s drunk enough that it comes out as a fond, almost motherly croon. “I think they might like each other. It’s sweet.”

“Hawke,” Isabela sighs. “You are utterly revolting. Tone it down a little before this rum comes back up.”

Merrill pauses in the middle of the complicated braid she’s giving Anders, and scrutinizes Hawke.

“I don’t think he looks any more revolting than usual,” she says, puzzled.

“Thank you, Merrill,” Hawke says, lifting his tankard to her briefly. “What a ringing endorsement.”

“No, Kitten,” Isabela says, full of fondness as she nonchalantly stacks her coin into towers, “he looks the same sloppy mess as ever, I agree. I _mean_ that he’s disgustingly full of the joys of spring, because he’s in -“

Aveline coughs the loudest, most unnatural-sounding cough in the history of Kirkwall. 

“That’s enough, Isabela,” she says. Isabela gives a flippant little salute, then uses the same hand to pretend to zip her lips shut.

Fenris is completely nonplussed. Hawke, though, is suddenly bolt upright in his seat. When Fenris tries to catch his eye, Hawke’s gaze slides away like water.

“Another, anyone?” he says, getting up and only swaying a little. On his way to the bartender he accidentally knocks one of the low tables with his leg, and gives what is clearly (even from this distance) a charming and self-deprecating apology, hands raised up towards his flushed face, palms out. The woman whose table he knocked is laughing. Fenris squints a little, because is she actually sticking her chest out at Hawke, or is he just drunker than he thinks and the perspective is tricking him?

“Don't worry, she's no competition,” Isabela says, very quickly, just managing to finish before Aveline swats her on the leg. Anders snorts and Merrill tuts a little, letting a small section of the braid loose and redoing it.

“Worth it,” Isabela says, though Fenris thinks her eyes may be watering a little. 

If Fenris had less dignity, he’d ask for the joke to be explained, but the idea brings him out in hives. Thankfully there's another option: if everyone else other than Merrill gets it, maybe it’s just a human joke, and Varric won’t get it either. When Varric prods an explanation out of Isabela, he'll just listen in.

“There, all done!” Merrill announces, settling her hands on her hips. “I mean, this kind of braid really needs flowers in it to set it off, but...”

Anders reaches his hands up to his head, feeling her work. Aveline and Isabela _ooh_ appreciatively, and Merrill colors almost as much as Varric’s barmaid. When Hawke returns with Varric Fenris accepts the new drink Hawke hands him, and nods at Varric while he pulls out a stool. Fenris waits for Isabela to start teasing him about the girl, but she says nothing. Every time Fenris thinks he’s got her figured out, she ruins it.

“Hawke, Varric!” Merrill says excitedly, much the same way she says everything. “What do you think for flowers for Anders’ hair, for next time? Buttercups?”

Fenris thinks privately that he’s not drunk enough for this conversation, and may in fact never be drunk enough. Varric, however, seems to be giving the question real thought.

“Buttercups would disappear on Blondie,” he says, taking a sip of ale. “Apple blossoms would be better, I think.”

“Oh, of course!” Merrill says. She gets a rapt, dreamy look like she’s already picturing it.

“Of course, perhaps we shouldn't discount the straightforward charm of marigolds,” Varric says, his face perfectly blank. Aveline twitches. Hawke hides his grin behind his tankard.

Isabela deals the cards again. Between hands, Varric spins a _ridiculous_ yarn that only Merrill would ever swallow. Hawke leans his chin on his hand and watches them with a smile playing around his mouth, his eyes half-lidded like a happy cat. His knee bumps Fenris’ under the table when he leans in periodically to whisper “help”, as though Hawke isn’t by far the worse card-player of the two of them. His breath is a warm handprint spanning Fenris’ cheek, cradling and then retreating, over and over, like the sea.

“Do my hair now, Merrill!” Isabela pleads.

“ –so then,” Varric continues while Merrill moves her stool, “the girl says that the rabbit _is_ her brother…”

“But what about the lobster?” Merrill asks as she parts Isabela’s hair carefully.

“I’m getting to that, Daisy,” he says. “First you need to know about the thirty-eight deep mushrooms that went missing from the apothecary -“

Despite himself, Fenris wants to know how Varric is going to combine a rabbit, a lobster and thirty-eight deep mushrooms, so he isn't paying attention the next time Hawke leans in to say something. Something happens between one sentence of Varric's story and the next; Hawke's elbow slips off the table and his big wide palm lands high on Fenris’ thigh. The touch is like a brand. Fenris starts, banging his knee against the underside of the table and scattering his cards over the tabletop.

“It’s not that good a story, Elf,” Varric says mildly. Fenris’ face feels as though it has ignited, the alcohol flush on his chest and neck surging up to beam over his whole face. Terrfiyingly, he can see Isabela whispering something to Aveline.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hawke cringes, rubbing his elbow over the splash of ale that’s slopped out of Fenris’ tankard. 

“No harm done,” Varric says, carefully lifting the few of Fenris’ cards that have flown farthest. When Fenris reaches out his hand to take them, Varric’s gaze catches on the ring on his right hand, and it’s only Anders' quick reflexes that prevent Varric's tankard being knocked over completely.

“Hawke?” Varric says, his voice cracking. Hawke is as still as if he accidentally got a faceful of Winter's Grasp. Varric and Hawke normally have this rather irritating quality where they can have entire conversations without opening their mouths, but Varric either isn’t looking properly tonight or is too drunk for it – it’s radiating out of Hawke’s every _pore_ that he shouldn't say anything else, but Varric seems undeterred.

“Well, I never,” he says, and gives a low whistle. “You’re wearing _that_ little number on the wrong hand, Elf.”

“I didn’t know there was a wrong hand for a defensive ring,” Fenris says. He’s more talking to fill the sudden strange silence around the table than anything. His mouth is bizarrely dry. “Do you know something about it? Is it dwarven?”

“Defensive ring?” Varric says. His eyebrows are pursed just slightly. Hawke's expression is utterly stricken. “It looks more like a –“

“Could someone deal me in?” Anders interrupts, extremely loudly, practically throwing himself across the table. It’s not subtle. It’s not even pitching a tent in the _vicinity_ of subtle. At the same time there's a sharp intake of breath from Varric, as though he’s just been viciously poked somewhere tender.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Aveline blusters, at equal volume.

Fenris mopes over the knowledge that this is obviously _not_ just some kind of unfathomable human joke, and it seems to be about him. Everyone plays on very determinedly, and Merrill starts in on Aveline’s hair next, but the atmosphere seems disturbed beyond recovery. It’s proved when Aveline leaves within the hour, citing an early patrol, and the two mages go with her, ostensibly because Merrill is almost snoring into her drink and Anders is her walk-home buddy under Aveline’s system.

Fenris half-wants to go home himself, and there’s a little pull of longing in his chest at the knowledge that when he gets up to leave, Hawke will too, because Fenris drew the longest straw for his homeward companion. It’s so tempting, the fact that they could just go, talk about something without everyone else, away from whatever stupid joke Fenris seems to currently be the butt of. It’s really – it’s the nicest – it’s the least-bad part of any day. Walking home.

But enough tension has gone out of Hawke’s shoulders that he looks almost his happy-cat self again, so Fenris tries to forget about it, stays while the candles burn low and Isabela works overtime entertaining them all. The best distraction of all is the fact that Varric’s barmaid eventually finishes her shift but is too shy to come by the table to say goodnight; Fenris watches over Varric’s shoulder while she hovers by the bar, staring at the back of his head like she wants ardently to tell him a secret. Her coat slung over her folded arms makes her look younger than she really is. 

“Is it me?” Isabela wonders aloud. She’s sat at the table such that she can see the barmaid, too; she makes a little wry face at Fenris.

“I think it’s me, actually,” Fenris says. He slants a sideways look at Hawke, who’s running his fingertip around the lip of his tankard in contemplation; he can see her and her indecision, too. He has a look on his face like the fact she won’t come over is giving him indigestion. Fenris has a sudden mad desire to do something about it, as if there’s anything he _could_ even do about it. Sometimes Hawke’s puppyish determination that everyone should be happy just rubs off. When Fenris catches his eye, Hawke smiles with half his mouth.

“Personally I think you’re both equally terrifying,” Hawke volunteers, his expression clearing. Fenris snorts, and Hawke is so close that Fenris can practically feel Hawke’s answering grin against his own cheek. He’s definitely very, very drunk now, leaning towards Fenris inexorably, like he’s taken a sudden step onto soft sand and can see nothing for it but to give himself up to gravity.

“What are you three babbling about?” Varric asks, his brow creased. Oh, he’s nearly as bad as Merrill when he thinks a joke’s going on without him.

“Nothing, Varric,” Hawke says quickly, straightening back into his own space. Varric hums a little like he doesn’t believe it, but takes his turn when Isabela prompts him.

When the barmaid finally leaves Hawke watches her go, frowning. Fenris has a sudden, terrible vision of the future, where this is just Aveline and Donnic all over again, and they’re all roped in to do something equally as stupid as run around lighting fires ( _flames of LOVE!_ , Hawke kept insisting at the time) while trying to stave off death from both secondhand humiliation and frostbite. Great. Sign Fenris up.

Isabela and Hawke exchange a look, and Fenris knows from the _exact awful cant_ of Isabela’s left eyebrow that they’ve just had the same thought. He’s going to need to buy more wine. Possibly he’s going to have to extend the mansion’s cellar.

“Getting late,” Varric comments. The drink finally seems to be hitting Isabela, she’s given up her first coin of the night.

“Mm,” Hawke agrees, and stretches. He squints a little at Fenris’ face in the candlelight, like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“I _thought_ that punch was harder than it looked,” he says, indistinct, terribly drunk and warm and – and – he runs the backs of his knuckles, feather-light, over Fenris’ cheekbone. Fenris can’t feel his legs. 

“You’re starting to bruise, right up here,” he goes on, frowning as though this is a grave injustice, as though the bruise is some foe he can fight and loot. Fenris breathes shallowly, and doesn’t move, and tries to say something, and can’t.

“Put a cold wine bottle on it when you get home, Elf,” Varric suggests. “Don’t be giving the illustrious ladies of Hightown any reason to cry into their silks.”

“Well, speaking of illustrious ladies,” Isabela says, grinning and getting to her feet, “this one right here needs her bed. Hawke, get over here and prop me up.”

“Of course, my lady,” Hawke says, starting to bow and then thinking better of it when he stumbles a little, laughing. They clatter over towards the stairs like a terrible three-legged beast, and begin to sing as they start their ponderous ascent. At least there are barely any patrons left for them to disturb.

There's a moment of silence at the table. Fenris takes a sip to avoid Varric's eyes, surprisingly heavy on him.

“Hawke’s a terrible fool for pretty things,” Varric says, apropos of nothing. He says it as though he’s been thinking about saying it for some time, but the significance is lost on Fenris.

That particular predilection (weakness) of Hawke’s is not a secret. Hawke kept his late mother in a steady stream of heavy, shining dresses, rubies around her throat the size of dragons’ eggs. Now that she’s gone and Hawke has one less person to spoil, he presses coin into Orana’s hands more frequently than ever, calling it a “performance bonus” when she stammers and tries to refuse. _Buy yourself something pretty at the market,_ he says, and means _bring it back and let me see you smiling in it_.

“That isn’t a secret,” Fenris says. Varric gives him a meaningful look.

“No, it isn’t,” he says.

|

It’s a still night, balmy for Kirkwall, as the city slides further into spring. It feels like home, sometimes, or like a place that could be a home, when the breeze is just right, when Fenris closes his eyes. 

Hawke hovers at Fenris’ elbow, just this side of too close, as if Fenris might stumble on an uneven paver and need catching. Sometimes Fenris _wants_ to need catching. It’s extremely silly and ill-advised. Thankfully when he looks up he sees that the moon has a shimmering halo, and he knows he’s just drunk, and therefore blissfully not responsible for himself.

When they pass the du Laiss estate Hawke reaches up and, without breaking his loping stride, neatly strips a bloom from the huge flowering tree outside their door. It’s a big purple starburst of a blossom; Fenris doesn’t know what it’s called. For a good few minutes Hawke just walks along carrying it, silent, lost in thought.

“Fenris,” he says eventually, and really Fenris should be sobering up in the fresh air, but he feels he’s getting drunker and drunker. His steps slow in anticipation, but Hawke doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else.

“Yes?” Fenris says, because he can’t not, because it would be stupid to say something like _I’m here_. 

“I want to give this to you,” Hawke says, on a big sigh, like Fenris has needled him and needled him and so, under extreme duress, he’s spilling his guts. “But now I feel silly. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.”

It would be unkind to laugh. Fenris is frequently unkind, but not when someone (when Hawke) is so drunk and earnest like this.

How to say, though, that Hawke could just put it into his hands, and Fenris would think _ah, a nice thing,_ and accept. Nice things and Hawke, they go together. Hawke and presents. Hawke and thinking about you when you’re not even around. You get used to it.

“Why?” Fenris asks, because it's safer. His tongue feels like shoe leather. “Why give it to me?”

“You’ll look after it,” Hawke says, with the simple conviction of the drunk.

What on earth would make Hawke think something like that, Fenris wonders. Fenris can barely look after himself. 

…he would _try_ , though, is the thing. He’d put it in some water and angle it towards the sun. He wants to know where this is written on him, how Hawke can read it. It's a terrible, vulnerable feeling.

“No matter how well I looked after it, Hawke, it would die without the tree,” he says instead. 

Hawke looks mournful about this for a second, and then he brightens, simple and pure as a mabari.

“I’ll get Merrill to enchant it,” he says. “I’ll fix it, and then I’ll bring it back to you.”

They’re at Fenris’s door. Hawke makes the same face that Varric’s barmaid had made, pregnant with something she couldn’t say. The moon sweats its halo up above, and Fenris opens the door, turning away to hide his eyes.

|

Fenris wakes in the afternoon full of resolve despite his headache. Everyone in their little company is the butt of some running joke at some time or another (some, like Anders, much more frequently than others) and it's never supposed to be (wholly) unkind. This, however, is oddly intolerable - somehow it's okay to be the focus of a joke you're aware of, or even one you might, for whatever reason, kind of deserve, but not... not _this_.

When it's late enough that the sun is dipped low in the sky, Fenris heads to the Emporium, the only place he can think of to start. The Trinketsmonger is markedly less pleased to see him than he is to see Hawke, but when Fenris asks about the ring, he smirks and starts talking.

“Oh yes, they were a good buy for me,” he says. “Powerful little things, and no two quite the same, you know. Got quite a lot of young men coming down from Hightown to buy them as marriage favors. Protective spell carved round the outside, and a few words from an old Elvish love poem on the inside. Keep her safe and tell her you love her, practical _and_ romantic.”

Fenris feels hysterical. Is that the sales pitch he gave Hawke? Did Hawke _know_ this?

…wait, of course he did. That’s the joke. That’s why it’s funny. He feels abruptly ill, and it’s not the hangover.

“You know, you’re wearing it on the wrong hand for a marriage favor, serah,” the Trinketsmonger points out.

“So I’ve heard,” Fenris snarls.

|

If Fenris weren’t so incandescently angry, he might wonder why the Trinketsmonger was so sure that this particular ring had been bought as a marriage favor. As it is, he’s furious, and his resolve doesn’t even flicker when Hawke answers the door in his ridiculous soft lounging clothes, hair sticking up over one ear and clearly betraying the fact that Fenris has woken him from an afternoon nap.

“Ah, I’ll have Orana put some tea on,” he says. He looks delighted to see Fenris. It’s somehow doubly humiliating.

“I found out what the ring is called,” Fenris hisses, his hands balling into fists at his sides, because there’s no point wasting time. “ _Pretty little thing._ The Trinketsmonger told me. He also told me that humans wear engagement rings on the fourth finger of the left hand, so I should consider moving mine.”

Hawke is sickeningly pale.

“Oh,” he says softly, horrified. “You’d better – Fenris, will you come in?”

Fenris does, and keeps quiet only long enough to verify that Orana is elsewhere, and Sandal and Bodahn are likewise nowhere to be found. 

“I did wonder what was so funny,” Fenris says, trying to drag up a sneer from somewhere, and failing. He sounds angry, but there’s a soft hurt part in the middle. It’s not quite right. “And now it’s obvious what the joke was.”

Hawke recoils as if Fenris has slapped him.

“I know, I know,” he says, and the hurt is, it’s unbelievable. Stupid, that one silly thing could hurt Fenris so much, after everything else. Stupid. “The idea that you would ever, _ever_ want… It was wrong of me, I shouldn’t have.”

"No, you shouldn't have," Fenris says. He wraps his arms around himself, even though the Hawke mansion is warm. The humiliation is awful. How did Hawke know the cards would fall so neatly together this way? How did he know that Fenris would accept anything from him without questioning the spirit it had been given in; how did he know that Fenris didn't know where humans wear their marriage promise? _Is it dwarven? I didn't know there was a wrong hand for a defensive ring_. So, so stupid. It's almost a perfect prank.

"Does - does it really offend you so much?" Hawke asks, his voice very quiet. "To know that I -"

"To know that you think it hilarious to buy me an equipment ring that all our -" friends - "colleagues realized doubles as a marriage favor?" Fenris snaps. "Yes, it offends me."

Hawke opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it again.

"Hilarious?" he says. "Fenris, it wasn't supposed to be - it was never _funny_. It certainly wasn't ever funny to me."

Fenris pauses, wrong-footed. He's missing something. He's definitely missing something. He just can't seem to reach it.

"Isabela certainly seemed to think it was funny," he says, stalling for thinking time.

"She wasn't laughing at you," Hawke says. He still looks ill. "Nobody was. They were laughing at me, because... Because, I mean, they all know."

"They all know?" Fenris parrots, pressing. He wishes vaguely that he could sit down. The energy his anger gave him has rapidly dissipated.

"That I meant it," Hawke says, in the tones of a man having something painful dragged out of him against his will. "That I knew exactly what it was, and bought it, and meant it. Because I - Maker, Fenris, I’m fairly certain the _Arishok_ knows."

Fenris has a sudden disturbing image of the two of them having a cosy chat about marriage favors, possibly in pastel sleepwear. The Arishok has twin pink nightcaps for his horns. Fenris is losing it. Hawke meant it? Hawke meant _what_? Not - not possibly...

"And I know how wrong it was," he goes on, looking terribly embarrassed. "I was going to buy you another, to replace it. Something utilitarian, like Merrill's. You -" He swallows. "I don't know if you realized, but last night - you kept resting it against your bottom lip while you were thinking about your next turn."

"Did I," Fenris says, suddenly hoarse.

"You were smiling," Hawke says. He's shuffling his left foot against the floor, heel to toe, heel to toe. "And I wanted - I always want – and I thought, just for a second, imagine if it was really… If we…”

He shrugs, eyes flicking away from Fenris to the fire burning in the grate.

"I thought it would be a little secret I could have to myself. Imagining that in some small way, you knew how I felt, and you... You're right to be angry with me. You didn't know what it was, and it wasn't fair."

With great effort Fenris ignores the sickening, wonderful feeling starting in his chest, as though his lungs are trying to leap from his body, slippery fish from a fisherman’s net. He could still be wrong.

"You said everyone knows," he says, his voice rough in his dry throat. "What do they know?"

“Don’t make me say it,” Hawke says, so quietly that Fenris barely hears him. He relents when Fenris stays silent, waiting. “They know that I… That if you let me, Fenris, if you showed any sign that you wanted me to, I would cover you in marriage favors. A new one every day, every finger, both hands -“

There's only one thing Fenris can do now, in this strange, brand new, luminous world. It’s such an easy thing that Fenris wonders how he lived so long without doing it before. So easy, to interrupt, to reach up, to fit his palm around the back of Hawke’s neck, to go up on his toes. It feels inevitable. It should be frightening.

“It really _is_ protective equipment, by the way,” Hawke says between kisses. He sounds gratifyingly dazed. Fenris curls his hands into the soft lapels of Hawke’s housejacket. “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

Fenris’ mouth curls up in a smile.

“Oh yes,” he says, “so I’ve heard. Practical _and_ romantic.”

“My middle names,” Hawke says, and waggles his eyebrows until Fenris barks a laugh.

|

Varric rushes the novel out within three months, and it’s a bestseller. Hawke carries it with him everywhere until he’s finished. Thankfully, Orana turns out to be a wonderful conversationalist, and saves Fenris from a week of silent meals punctuated only by Hawke's indignant squawk.

When Hawke gets to the chapter where Frederic’s ring _shatters a Templar’s sword on contact_ while he shelters a wounded Gregory "in the safe harbor of his manly arms”, Hawke throws the book across the room.

…Fenris sneaks down and rescues it later. After all, everyone keeps saying he needs to practice his reading if he’s going to get better.

**Author's Note:**

> Two little-known side-quests appear in my journal when I play this game. The first is called Make Fenris Wear the Most Ridiculous Accessories You Can Find. The second is Buy Fenris What Sounds Really, Really Like an Engagement Ring, and well, if you say so, game, I mean –


End file.
